Papyrus has a great card and stationary selection, and I wanted to send out cards to all our guests. My mother hand wrote all her invitations (she wrote 150, I wrote less than 50), and I wanted to carry on that tradition. What was nice was that I could go to the store and see the selection of both eco-friendly and wedding cards, and then I could go online and see what was available at other stores and on sale online. The cards we chose were beautiful, but it was really hard to choose just one.

I’m not sure that many eco-conscious brides know this, but you can register at Ten Thousand Villages. We started by saying that we didn’t want gifts, or that a donation could be made in our name (http://www.womenforwomen.org/), but people still wanted to give us gifts for our new life together. We have always loved 10,000 Villages for their vision of helping artisans receive fair wages for their work. The gifts we got were thoughtful, beautiful, and so generous of our friends!

we can book our own trips, though we won’t be going anywhere far for a while! Not while one of us is still in school!

This was the only time that I acted like a conventional bride! I was being pressured by my co-workers to send out save-the-date cards, which I didn’t think was necessary considering how small the party was. We didn’t have the budget for magnets! But, someone told me that if you signup at mywedding.com, they let you make a homepage all about your wedding for free. Mark and I both know how to make an actual webpage (not that hard), but we were able to make one at mywedding.com without having to register, and there were no pop-ups. It was actually really pretty, and it let Mark and I tell our story to our friends and family about why we wanted to get married.

We wanted our wedding to be unique and original, and simple, but the mother-in-laws (on both sides!) insisted that Mark wear a suit. A real suit, one that fit him well and that wasn’t faded. It’s hard finding a good suit at a vintage store, so we conceded and went to Macy’s. I like Macy’s, so we went and had a suit ‘fitted’ for Mark. After he found a style that he liked and fit him well, they hemmed it and it was ready in less than a week. He just got a suit, not a tuxedo, and I think it will serve him well for all future weddings we go to together!

Mark gave me his grandmother’s engagement ring, and I had my grandmother’s wedding band, and we had both refitted to fit my hand. We choose Buchkosky because that was where Mark’s family would go to get watches repaired, and jewelry cleaned. This is my first real piece of jewelry, and it’s actually scary how beautiful the ring is and how much I love it. They also made a band for Mark that looks like my wedding band, with the date of our wedding and each other’s name inscribed on the inside.

There are a few places that you can get locally grown flowers in the Cities, which was what we wanted for our wedding. Artemisia was a great choice, because we were able to put in our order with Kim a month or so in advance, and she was able to tell us what would most likely be in season and available, the costs, and what we could expect in our budget. I think she really liked that we were striving for an eco-friendly wedding. I was happy that I was able to support the local businesses, and at the same time have something that was beautiful and not full of chemicals.

We wanted to give everyone a little something to take home with them. We got the idea of giving our friends and family little cakes and brownies from French Meadow because that was one of our original starting points when we were shopping for an organic cake. We wrapped the goodies (we bought various kinds) in petal flower paper and wrote a personal note to each guest about how happy we were that they could be there. Our signing off point was, “To sweet beginnings”. It’s sentimental, but the timing was appropriate.

This was a place that Mark and I love to go to, though usually for lunch. It’s also the place of our first date! They DO cater dinners, and they came up with a wonderfully delicious and environmentally conscious dinner and appetizers! I’m not a vegetarian, but Mark is, but I like to be conscious about where the meat I eat comes from. The chicken was from Minnesota farms, and the produce was in season. Our celebratory meal with our close friends and family was a reflection of the life we wanted to live together. And the vegetarians loved the cannelloni!

We had a small party of friend and family, so we didn’t need a big cake, which also meant that we could get a nice cake. We wanted a cake that was organic and no trans fat. We also wanted a cake that was special. With a lot of research, and a lot of taste testing, we chose Rainbow’s End just because the chocolate cake tasted so good. Under their suggestion, we had a small 8-inch cake make, and then had 2 dozen cupcakes, which looked really pretty. I never would have thought of getting cupcakes, and that worked really well! Organic and kosher!